Ben O’Connell

A north Northumberland pub, whose fund-raising campaign gained poignancy when one of its own was diagnosed with cancer, raised nearly £14,000 for charity in 2015.

And while the community of the Village Inn in Longframlington can be very satisfied with that impressive total, there was even more good news as barmaid Becky Cole is now in full remission.

As reported by the Gazette in June last year, staff and customers at the pub held a series of fund-raising events and challenges to raise money for CLIC Sargent, which was supporting the 21-year-old through treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

At that time, Becky had completed her sixth and final round of chemotherapy at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle and had just had her Hickman line (a central venous catheter used for chemotherapy) removed.

In what was a strange coincidence, when she received her diagnosis in January and went to tell her boss, Terry Maughan, he told her they had just decided to support CLIC Sargent, which helps children and young people up to the age of 24 cope with cancer.

Team Becky at The Village Inn pledged to raise £10,000, but during a presentation at the pub on Tuesday night, it was revealed that the final amount raised was £13,942.30.

Dee Tyler, CLIC Sargent’s area fund-raising manager for the North East, Cumbria and Yorkshire, said: “You guys have been amazing.

“When I first met Terry and he said he wanted to raise £10,000, I thought ‘Come on, it’s a small pub in a village!’

“It’s an awful lot of money and I just want you to know how much it’s appreciated.”

She explained that the charity spends £3,750 on average on each family it works with, meaning the community in Longframlington has raised enough to support three-and-a-half families through their cancer ordeal.

And Becky is in no doubt as to how valuable the backing of the charity, the community and her employers (including David Carr at the village shop) has been in her battle.